A Firefighter in the Family

“Maybe. We’ll know for sure when I get the lab report.” She paused so long, Zac looked back toward her. “Why’d you give up being a firefighter?”

Hot anger hit him in the gut, as if his career—one he loved—had been stolen from him only yesterday instead of two years ago.

He snorted at her question. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Why would I be?” She leaned back in her chair and gave him a look of challenge. “I seem to remember being a firefighter meant more than anything to you.”

More than her. She didn’t say the words. She didn’t have to.

No matter what he’d done though, did she have to pretend?

“I wasn’t hot on the idea of working with people who didn’t have my back.”

She scrunched her forehead.

“You seriously don’t know?”

“Would I have asked you if I knew?” Irritation laced her words.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear it from your brothers.”

She looked down, but not before he saw a shadow cloud her pale blue eyes. Only a moment passed before she raised her gaze and stared straight at him. “Must have slipped their minds.”

Were they still estranged, even after all this time? Why did he find that surprising? He knew how unyielding the Cooke men were.

He glanced out toward the tide and let the familiar story flow out like the waves, curious how she’d react. “You’d been gone about six months when we got a call to a house fire. Turned out it was the house of a woman I’d just broken up with. Hell, it wasn’t really even a breakup. We’d only gone out three or four times.”

“And it was arson and the finger pointed at you?”

Zac noticed the sound of disbelief in her voice.

“Yeah. Easy target. The ex. A firefighter who understands how to make a house burn quickly. Not a native.”

“All circumstantial evidence. What about the woman? What did she say?”

He snorted a mirthless half laugh. “Swore up and down I was trying to kill her. Only she wasn’t at home. Though she normally would have been asleep at that time. She worked nights.”

“Did the investigators have any actual hard evidence on their side?” she asked, all business.

The conversation wasn’t going how Zac had expected. Where was the finger-pointing? The animosity?

“At first. They found a can of gasoline and matches in my truck, and a ‘witness’ said she’d heard me threaten my ex.”

“Pretty damning evidence, and yet here you sit.” Randi looked down at her empty water bottle. “Why did your ex-girlfriend think you tried to kill her?”

“She was psychotic.”

“Really?” Her voice rose slightly in surprise.

“I don’t know if she’s been diagnosed, but it’s there. You don’t notice at first, but that’s why I broke it off.” That, and the fact it had just never felt right. Not like his time with Randi had.

“And she didn’t take it well.”

Damn, it was odd talking to Randi about another woman.

“Obviously not. She burned her own place and tried to pin it on me.”

She tilted her head a fraction. “They proved that?”

“Yeah.” He watched her face, trying to figure out if she thought someone had made a mistake and he really was guilty after all. Hell, he’d strap himself to a damn lie detector machine if it’d erase this new suspicion.

“How?” She didn’t sound accusatory, simply curious.

“She told a friend how she got the idea after reading about an unsolved arson in the newspaper, how she planted the evidence and got her coked-up neighbor to claim to be a witness to me threatening her. The friend told the police.”

“And you didn’t go back to the department after you were cleared?”

“My innocence didn’t matter to a lot of people, including your family.”

She crossed her arms and shifted in her seat. “They thought you did it?”

“They sure didn’t back me up. Can’t say I wanted to be best buddies after that.”

“Why did you stay in Horizon Beach?” She stared, unwavering, at him, her captivating blue eyes making his breath catch. How could he still be attracted to her after all this time? When she could put him through the hell of suspicion again? They weren’t even the same people they used to be. They didn’t know each other anymore. But his body didn’t seem to mind.

Randi was listening to him, wasn’t she? Wasn’t that more than her brothers had done?

Zac let out a sigh. “Sometimes I ask myself the same question.” He stood and stalked back toward the bar. This time, he was the one who needed a drink.

RANDI WATCHED the power in Zac’s movements as he zigzagged through the crowd. Heat surged to her face when she realized she was watching him in a purely I’m-still-attracted-to-him way. Only it wasn’t the same as before. While he’d been young and exuberant then, now he was all man and rough around the edges. Accusation and the loss of a dream did that to a person. But why did she care? Hadn’t he just received a little of his own medicine? He was no stranger to turning his back on someone he supposedly cared about.

She needed to ask Eric about the other side of Zac’s story. Lord knew most of her brothers were aces at holding a grudge, but she hoped Eric would give her the honest story, one not tainted by hard feelings. It was one thing to hold a grudge when someone had done something to deserve it, quite another when they hadn’t.

And she couldn’t abide a wrong—even if it had been perpetrated against someone who’d once wronged her.

Someone who’d broken her heart.

Chapter Four

Randi slept badly. She wasn’t sure if it was the less-than-comfortable bed, her inability to stop thinking about her family or the disturbing nightmare in which Zac was trapped inside a burning house while her brothers stood back and watched, but it didn’t matter. Bad sleep was bad sleep, and Randi rolled out of bed as daylight was creeping into Horizon Beach. She changed into her running clothes and shoes, pulled her hair into a high ponytail and roused Thor. He yawned wide and tried to sneak a few more winks.

“If I have to get up at the crack of dawn, so do you.”

The horizon was as pink as some of the beach homes when Randi and Thor hit the beach at a brisk jog. Thor chased shorebirds and frolicked in and out of the surf.

Gradually, the kinks in Randi’s back and her headache ebbed. She’d missed running along the beach at dawn, the way the world seemed to be asleep and the day full of possibility. She sometimes managed to get over to Pensacola Beach for a morning run, but even that had become more rare as her job took her all over Florida and required increasing amounts of her time.

She wasn’t complaining. Someone had to make sure the firebugs didn’t get away with their crimes. Few things were more destructive than fire. Victims lost their homes, their businesses, their very lives. Unfortunately, there were people out there whose fascination with it led to all kinds of loss—including that experienced by her father.